It’s an unfortunate reality that it’s harder to find allied healthcare workers in rural areas.
According to the Commonwealth Fund’s State of Rural Primary Care in the United States report, 92% of rural counties were designated primary care health professional shortage areas. Meanwhile, in the MedCerts Partner Solutions 2025 Allied Healthcare Staffing Survey, 27.88% of healthcare employers said their facility being in a rural area, and candidates preferring working in urban areas, was a significant roadblock in filling their allied healthcare vacancies.
Rural healthcare facilities need help to fill allied healthcare vacancies. Here are 8 reasons why online certification training, and MedCerts specifically, are effective solutions to addressing the workforce shortage.
#1. It’s flexible – In rural communities, there isn’t usually an in-person training program available, forcing students to travel 45 minutes to 2 hours to a college or university that may or may not offer the relevant course. MedCerts provides learners the opportunity to take the didactic portion of an allied health certification training program online, on their own time, which enables rural communities to recruit locally. It also expands recruiting reach to college students, who can study on their own schedule.
For example, Union General Health System in Georgia is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from any major city with an in-person surgical technologist training program. Even then, there were two schools south of Union General, near Atlanta, that had surgical technologist training programs, but shut down because they didn’t have anyone to teach them.
With MedCerts providing the online didactic curriculum, Union General finally had the missing resource needed to create an in-person surgical technologist training program for locals.
#2. It’s fast and affordable – Healthcare facilities are generally cost-conscious, but that’s especially true in rural settings. Over 100 rural hospitals have closed in the United States in the last decade, with many more at risk. MedCerts programs pair flexible online learning with employer-collaborated clinical experiences, helping healthcare organizations train talent efficiently while controlling staffing and onboarding costs. Partnering with MedCerts gets learners job-ready faster in a cost-efficient way.
#3. Not competing for the same talent – In urban areas, there’s a musical-chairs issue where hospitals and other healthcare facilities often poach allied healthcare employees to fill vacancies. That’s cost-prohibitive. In rural communities, there’s often such a lack of qualified allied healthcare professionals in the area that poaching would be impossible. In those situations, training new allied healthcare professionals is the only realistic solution to fill those open positions.
#4. Improves retention – San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center (SLV), a 40-bed hospital in rural Alamosa, Colorado, partnered with MedCerts to create a surgical technician training program. SLV covered the cost of tuition for students picked for the program, in exchange for the learners agreeing to work at the facility for at least 2 years. So far, 100% of learners who participated in the program still work at SLV.
However, even for employers not using the long-term agreement strategy, creating educational pathways for your employees organically makes them more satisfied with their long-term job outlook. For instance, when MedCerts polled employers they worked with, asking if partnering with MedCerts on an upskilling or healthcare training program increased employee retention, 93.58% of respondents confirmed it had.
#5. Learners don’t need prior clinical experience – In rural areas, there are limited candidates with prior clinical experience who apply for allied healthcare training programs. MedCerts’ programs are as effective at training people with no clinical assistance as people already in the field. In fact, MedCerts has a lot of experience helping rural facilities set up a “grow your own” program. That’s where the healthcare employer might take someone who is in a transporter role, or a food service role, and upskill them into a patient-facing, clinical environment.
This greatly expands the number of already trusted employees eligible for clinical-facing roles.
#6. Opens recruitment to students further away – Story Family Medicine is a small direct primary clinic in rural Moscow, Idaho, that employs 17 people. When partnering with MedCerts to train one certified phlebotomist and several certified medical assistants, Story Family Medicine targeted the nearest community college for recruits. It was 45 minutes away, and the roads can be tricky during Winter. However, because the MedCerts curriculum is asynchronous and can be completed remotely, the students could progress with the non-clinical portion of their education without physically being at Story Family Medicine.
The certified phlebotomist completed her certification in about 4 months while also being a full-time college student and is now doing a fantastic job. Meanwhile, medical assistants, who go through a longer curriculum, are making great progress. Training these workers for these specific roles wouldn’t have been possible without an online curriculum.
#7. Opens up recruitment to high school students – With a limited population in rural communities, one way to target potential allied health workers is to reach out to them before they join the workforce. MedCerts Partner Solutions can bring their programs into local high schools, as early as 11th grade, and tailor the programs to local Career and Technical Education (CTE) needs. The courses count as elective credit and train high school students to pursue allied healthcare jobs when they’re ready to join the workforce.
In some cases, post-secondary institutions may also grant credit for prior learning in MedCerts courses, providing at least three separate benefits for high school students enrolling in MedCerts’ programs.
#8. Rural Apprenticeships – In some ways, offering allied healthcare apprenticeships is a no-brainer. Healthcare facilities already have to train new employees on how to do things their way, regardless of experience level. When apprentices start out in your facility, they won’t have to unlearn what might have only been relevant with a previous employer.
Additionally, there are some clear benefits to offering a formal year-long apprenticeship program. There are tax breaks, offset costs and increased retention. Additionally, MedCerts is a fully approved Department of Labor intermediary, with experience in both building apprenticeship programs from scratch and expanding existing ones. In addition to the didactic curriculum, MedCerts is an end-to-end partner that will assist with logistics and help find incentives for funding.
Conclusion
Often, the biggest problem in addressing the rural shortage of allied healthcare workers is the inaccessibility of quality training programs. Partnering with MedCerts and offering prospective employees an online certification training program creates a sustainable pipeline of local allied healthcare professionals.
Want more information about how MedCerts can help your facility set up or expand an allied healthcare training program? Contact us at [email protected]!
